Austin's E46 build (2/10, do not recommend)

[mozinqo]

disclaimer: this build is not for the impatient, I don't have impatient funding..so yeah. I do love this car though, and I don't ever plan on giving it up.

So hi, my name's Austin. I live in North Carolina, and I drive an E46. I've had a few, but I bought this one wrecked a couple of months ago and this will show you some progress since August of 2013.

Also, I'm trying to find a camera but until then these will be iphone pictures, get over it.


I got M3 wheels and thought this was as low as I'd go..cute.


I seriously took this picture and bragged about how low I was *cringe*


I then painted those wheels black, because who doesn't love black? also, that front bumper clearance makes me cry.


now we're getting into more recent pictures, this is just before I lowered the front more.


this is also before lowering it more, and getting rid of those vinyl 'eyelids'


again before lowering more. I should really get around to building a skid plate so I don't mess something up, but roll hard, you know?

[two weeks later]



I made the daily/mom's car look a bit less 'mom'


racing season started, excited to get my redneck on.


and I almost cried from happiness when this happened backing out of my garage, I guess that part of the driveway is a bit uneven

Now I need to get some pictures of it currently, but as of right now it's been raining for two weeks straight and it's cold as hell and I have no motivation. That's why I'm making this to motivate me. If it isn't raining tomorrow, I'm going to go torch some hubs off of a parts car and put the wheel bearings on mine because it sounds like my car is raping metal when it drives (which I'm pretty sure is a wheel bearing, but if anyone else has experience with that let me know).

Long term plans are to go lower, do a ton of much needed body work, a LOT of custom work and much nicer wheels. I hope to live up to some of the build threads around here. Thanks for reading, anyone that has. Hopefully I'll get some updates up tomorrow or Thursday.

[mozinqo]

oh and I almost forgot, these pictures were originally a ton larger than this, and I don't know if this is a good size for them..so criticisms are more than welcome

[rightfullrudder]

Looks good so far. The RX looks hilarious up on stilts like that.

Also, fellow NC member. Followed you on insta. Must get lonely building a car in Pikeville.

[mozinqo]

Looks good so far. The RX looks hilarious up on stilts like that.

Also, fellow NC member. Followed you on insta. Must get lonely building a car in Pikeville.

Thanks man, yeah that was weird because I'm used to working on things much lower

Building a car in Pikeville is very lonely, and you get a TON of disapproving looks.

[MikeyP3]

E46 looks good.

Can't go wrong with clean and simple!

[mozinqo]

E46 looks good.

Can't go wrong with clean and simple!

Thanks man!

I agree completely. I want to do a ton of stuff to set my car apart from other E46s while keeping it clean and simple, so we'll see how that goes.

[rightfullrudder]

Thanks man!

I agree completely. I want to do a ton of stuff to set my car apart from other E46s while keeping it clean and simple, so we'll see how that goes.

If you want to keep it clean and simple I suggest blast pipes with flamethrowers and a cardboard widebody.

[mozinqo]

If you want to keep it clean and simple I suggest blast pipes with flamethrowers and a cardboard widebody.

fire makes anything cooler, I don't know if I can afford cardboard though..I may go with a construction paper widebody

[mozinqo]

Alright, I'm a bit late on the update but I've been pretty busy. I finally got my car on jackstands Thursday, and spent quite a few hours doing random things I needed to do. We cleaned the shop out today, so I'll have that to work in soon. Anyway, these are just a few pictures from the last few days. I need to get started doing more things, so I apologize for how boring this build thread has been so far. But hey, I'm a boring guy


nice booty shot


I'm so close to wearing through my exhaust, and there's so much rust under here. I should really do a lot of things, including build a skid plate, but I'm so lazy.


Kids, don't ever use spray paint over plastidip, I promise it doesn't come off the same. These wheels will have to be stripped before any of that excess black ever comes off. Oh well, you live and you learn. It's a good thing these are just temps/back-ups.


so back to black wheels because the wheels are gross and deserve all the cover up they can get. whatever, and good god I need a lip so badly. or 17s. I think I'd rather have 17s.


whatever ft. Josh's golf which is getting sold soon for a new, air-ier car. keeping the VSPs though, because they're a great company and you should check them out if you haven't (@vspwheels on instagram)

Now we get to today, which involved a lot of cleaning and rearranging of the shop.


we should really finish this thing already, I'm ready to drive it to shows and hurt the feelings of truck owners everywhere.


minor height difference, and I thought my car had rust issues


as clean as it's been in months, now we just need to move all of this stuff around some more.


and finally, a little tease of what's happening tomorrow. hopefully it'll annoy some people, and draw some attention to the business. I'd be ecstatic if either of those things happened. Maybe it'll also motivate me to find some new wheels because I know mine will look gross with whichever one of these I choose. Oh well, it's a work in progress.

[FunfGang]

Looks good so far, certainly pretty low.

[mozinqo]

During weeding, with the sample. This thing took forever, my cutter decided to randomly stop cutting then sent an error message, hours of googling later, here we are. They should fit from the bottom of my doors to about an inch and a half under the side trim and they're matched to my wheel color for now. I'll probably get tired of them in a month and take them off, so I don't care about how terrible they're going to look

If you haven't noticed, I have no idea what direction I want to take this car. Part of me says just to run a set of RSs and minimal camber and body work, so euro styling. The other part of me wants excessive camber and fender/body work, on a set of aggressive wheels with VIP styling. I'll probably end up going with the latter because it's more fun, and makes more people mad.

[mozinqo]

Looks good so far, certainly pretty low.

Thank you

I'm planning on being lower once I get around to adding some protection to that oil pan..and exhaust, and everything else underneath there.

[mozinqo]

Alright, it's been a while but a lot of not so cool things have happened which have led to some very cool things being but into the works.

Let's start with the not so cool. By not so cool, I mean I almost died.



Apparently, our smaller impact doesnt tighten lug nuts enough, who knew? Well, I know now. Surprisingly there wasn't a lot of damage to my frame or any of the under side of my car, my fender was destroyed and my wheel flew a few hundred feet after hitting the ditch. All things considered, watching my wheel fly was pretty cool. The fender part wasn't quite as cool.



We have a parts car, so I was able to get another fender pretty easily though. Which leads me to the very cool things being put into the works. I own a sticker business but I've never wrapped a car before, however I've heard it isn't too hard. I'm in the process of looking for the color I want right now (note: I'm planning on being done before SoWo, so I have about a month.) I've basically decided on brown gloss metallic from Avery, for reference here's a picture.



My brother also traded his GTI for this



which left me feeling like this



so I'm bagging my car now too.

DISCLAIMER: This will most likely be the most ghetto air set up to exist on stanceworks, if you don't like that then I don't like you.

I'm on a pretty tight budget, and with sowo approaching soon..it's going to be interesting to say the least, and this build thread is about to get a lot more posting. So last night, we went over to my dad's friend's shop to look for some air-y things we could use. I'll be buying the bags, the tank and the lines but I should have everything else I need laying around. We were able to find all of the fittings and some 3/8 line, and a few more things that are going to be a bit more "custom".



so much room for activities (also excuse the poor picture quality, had to use my dad's phone)



maybe some day I'll be looking for one of these



all in all, it was pretty productive and I was able to find all of this out there



oh and I just bought some new wheels too, should look pretty good with the brown I'm going to try and keep them on the DL though.

So, to end this post, the plans for the next 30 days are to do a complete air system with a lot of fabrication, fit my new wheels once they come in, do a lot of fabrication work to my suspension (besides the air) and try my hand at wrapping my car. It should be a fun 30 days, and hopefully everyone will get to see the finished product in Helen.

[DER E30]

Holy crap! That must have been an experience! Once, I forgot to torque my lug nuts on my e30, I got about 200 feet down the road and it felt loose in the steering wheel... I went home in discovered my loose front wheel... That scared me...


Excited to see how the air set up goes!

[Thooooom]

one of my friends lost a wheel doing about 60 and it completely trashed everything, cant imagine how scary it must be haha. its always cool when you come back stronger though! your plans sound awesome and i love the air build, its expensive stuff so doing what you can to save yourself money is awesome!